


In Your Dreams You'll See Us Falling

by mytimehaspassed



Series: Dance On Our Graves Verse [6]
Category: Band of Brothers, The Pacific - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Minor Character Death, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-15
Updated: 2013-04-15
Packaged: 2017-12-08 15:13:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/762842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mytimehaspassed/pseuds/mytimehaspassed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The night Babe comes back to him, Roe dreams of his father.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Your Dreams You'll See Us Falling

**IN YOUR DREAMS YOU'LL SEE US FALLING**  
BAND OF BROTHERS/THE PACIFIC  
Babe/Roe; Sledge/Snafu; (implied past) Roe/Snafu  
 **WARNINGS** : Modern era AU; spoilers for the series; mentions of war; graphic violence  
 **NOTES** : Dance On Our Graves verse:  
I. [If You Wanna Leave Better Build a Rocket](http://andletmestand.livejournal.com/24803.html)  
II. [We Were Two Until We Melted Down](http://andletmestand.livejournal.com/24574.html)  
III. [We Dance On Our Graves With Our Bodies Below](http://andletmestand.livejournal.com/24041.html)  
IV. [If I Had a Heart I Could Love You](http://andletmestand.livejournal.com/24887.html)  
V. [And You Know You Can't Heal Them All](http://andletmestand.livejournal.com/25107.html)  
VI. this

  
**I**

The night Babe comes back to him, Roe dreams of his father.

They’re in the candy aisle of the dime store and Roe’s father has his hand on a packet of M&Ms, an open bottle of soda fizzing in his fist, and Roe watches him look up, watches him see the man with the gun, watches him smile in an easy, friendly way, his hands in front of him, unarmed. There’s nothing Roe can do here, nothing he can say, and he can’t stop watching any of this, his father’s soft, lilting drawl as he doesn’t beg, doesn’t cry, but only quirks his mouth, slowly, slowly, and asks the man to let him leave.

The man with the gun tilts his head and says something Roe can’t make out, something soft, and shoots Roe’s father through the cheek. Roe watches his father fall, fingers scrabbling for balance, the soda exploding beneath him, the hole in his cheek dark and angry. The man steps forward and Roe feels the tears in his eyes, the tears on his face, as he watches the man shoot again, his gun flashing above his father, another bullet hole blooming on his forehead.

The man waits one second, two, before he turns toward the sound of screaming behind the counter, the cashier frantically dialing the phone beside her. He shoots her, too. And the boy at the back of the store searching for the milk, the boy who can’t be more than sixteen, the keys to his first car digging into his hand so hard it starts to bleed.

Roe remembers what comes after, the six o’clock news and the journalists at his grandmother’s front door and Snafu silent and still beside him and his break down in the bathroom of a little diner in New Orleans the Sunday after, when Snafu had tried to buy him pancakes with the money he made selling baby alligators to tourists on the side of the highway. Roe had thrown up in the stall, his forehead dangling over the white plastic seat of the toilet, his back heaving with hard, painful thrusts, and Snafu had broken the lock by the time there was nothing left, just slick bile drooling from Roe’s mouth, and Roe had cried into his neck and asked him to never leave him, and Snafu had promised, small, quiet, in the space between them.

The dreams had come after that, the dreams his grandmother had told him about, warned him about, the dreams that could be real, the dreams that haunt him when he closes his eyes at night.

She had told him that they were a part of him, just like his healing hands, and he had told her that he never imagined God could be so cruel.

***

Babe is uneasy for a week, unsure of how to act around him, and Roe thinks that this is all his fault, that this is everything he deserves, so he’s shy and charming and perfect whenever Babe speaks, whenever Babe looks at him, watching his fingers and lips and strong, thick thighs when he thinks that Roe can’t see.

He makes beignets and coats Babe’s mouth with sugar when Babe kisses him, sweeping the flour across his cheeks like his grandmother used to when he was small. He slips quiet in the shower with Babe one morning, sliding behind him and kissing his wet shoulder, and Babe leans his head against the wall, the spray fanning across his neck, and Roe keeps kissing him and can’t stop, won’t, until Babe turns around and pulls him close, not moving his mouth, but telling him that it’s okay all the same, telling him that he forgives him.

And Roe kisses him back, his fingers turning red under the hot water from the showerhead, curling around Babe’s biceps, even though he’s still not sure that he deserves Babe’s forgiveness.

***

Snafu calls one morning after Babe’s already left for work, calls the house line and Roe lets it ring once, twice, three times before he picks up, positioning the phone between his shoulder and his neck so he can place his hands on the laptop in front of him, adding lines to his resume, his mouth distracted as he says, “Hello?”

Snafu says his name and Roe pauses, his fingers on the keys, before returning the greeting.

Snafu hasn’t reached out to him since the half-assed I’M SORRY in the hotel room, and Roe hasn’t exactly been a friend, letting Babe badmouth him for hours the day he came back, Roe’s whiskey haze and Babe’s hand slowly, warmly, sliding up Roe’s feverish arm. Babe had called Snafu a coward and a liar and Roe had wanted to ask if Babe had meant him instead.

“Hi, cher,” Snafu says again, and it sounds like he’s catching his breath, like he’s talking despite not knowing what to say. “Haven’t heard from you in a while. Thought I’d see how you’re doing.”

It’s then that Roe remembers that Snafu’s father has died, and he closes his eyes for one, long moment. “I’m sorry,” he says, and his voice over the line is choked, hoarse, between them. “I should be asking you that. How are you, Merriell?”

Snafu laughs, wry, but it’s familiar and easy, malleable, and Roe knows that sounds like he knows anything else. “All good, boo,” he says, and his voice is affectionate. “Sledge is giving me the evil eye, though.” And there’s movement in the background, quiet, muffled, the sound of someone standing up and pulling a door closed behind them.

Snafu blows air from his mouth and Roe can picture him smoking, but it’s half a memory, one instant on the back porch of Snafu’s father’s house, Roe sitting beside him in his faded fatigues, Snafu worrying a crease in Roe’s pants with two of his fingers, the air hot and sticky and sweltering around them. Snafu had kissed him then, with his father sitting just on the other side of the wall in the living room, and Roe had let him.

“I’m sorry,” Roe says again, and Snafu makes a choked noise and Roe knows he’s gearing up to say something harsh, so he cuts him off instead. “I’m here if you need it, Merriell. I told Babe everything, he understands. He won’t kick you out if you come here again.”

“That’s kind of you, Gene,” Snafu says, and his voice is barely above a whisper. He blows out more smoke, and Roe feels the ghost of Snafu’s lips on his, muscle memory. “But I’m happy here.”

And Roe says, “I’m glad.”

 

**II**

After his father dies, Snafu moves in with Sledge permanently. Sledge’s parents don’t make a sound when he brings the corrugated, dusty boxes from his father’s house into Sledge’s bedroom, piling them tight against the wall, pulling out clothes and shoes and the torn, creased drawings of birds that Sledge had sent him.

Snafu never officially asks, but only mostly because he’s so much better at taking, and Sledge watches Snafu unpack his meager belongings without saying a word, slowly pulling off his hoodie and then his shirt, his fingers moving down towards his fly, before he pulls Snafu onto the bed, his mouth hovering close to Snafu’s mouth.

***

When asked, Sledge’s mother smiles politely and says that Merriell, her mouth moving faster than her eyes, is an old family friend that’s staying with them for a while. She doesn’t mention Sledge in the same sentence, doesn’t mention the way Snafu holds her son’s hand at dinner or how he walks slowly beside him after church, stopping just outside the arch of the front door to kiss Sledge on the corner of his mouth, Sledge’s hair fiery in the sunrise, burning both of them.

She bakes pies from scratch and lets them cool in rows on the long dining room table, pushing her glasses over her nose to read the small, tight handwriting of her grandmother’s recipe. She rolls out the dough for hours, cuts little maple leaves by hand, washes apples and pears and peaches in the sink, wiping them with the apron she wears around her waist like a shield.

Sledge dips a finger in one of the first blackberries, poking a hole through the warm, flaky crust, and she slaps the back of his hand lightly, scolding him with a cluck of her tongue.

It’s the first time she’s touched him since Snafu came back from New Orleans.

***

Snafu is good with his hands.

He finds a job just outside of Mobile working on cars in a little auto body shop where most of the clients come in with rusted out vehicles that would probably be worth more as scrap metal. He invites Sledge for a tour, and the men eye him up wearily, Sledge’s red hair and soft hands, his clean skin, and Snafu smiles with all of his teeth, biting, and takes Sledge by the hand to the employee bathroom, where he fits him up against the wall and leaves bruises on his hips.

Sledge walks out, no longer untouched, and the men don’t say a word.

***

(Snafu tried college only once.

Sledge had dragged him to Bishop State to sign up for some classes that he thought might be interesting, and everything in the admission’s office was so pristine and white that Snafu had felt out of place with his dirty hands and creased clothes. Sledge had sat with him for an hour, the pretty older woman behind the desk smiling wide and bright at both of them, pointing her manicured hands at the brochure of degrees and certificates, asking him what he wants to do with his life.

Snafu is used to the desert. He’s used to fatigues and sand storms and the cold metal of his gun against his cheek, he’s used to the taste of Sledge’s mouth, he’s used to his father’s belt on the broad side of his back. He’s used to the burn of whiskey down his throat after a long, hard day.

He’s not used to the polite, organized society of a community college campus, where the boys dress in tight jeans and printed tee shirts and the girls wear bright, patterned dresses with flat shoes and the professors stand in front of a white board and teach equations and philosophies with their hands opening and closing in front of them, animated.

At the woman’s insistence, he picks a class that sounds easy, benign, something that costs less than one of Sledge’s paychecks.

He drops out by the third week.)

***

They don’t talk about Roe. Snafu doesn’t even mention his name when Sledge is around, even though they both feel the tension buried just underneath their skins, even though Snafu keeps things that were clearly once Roe’s: an old book full of dog-ears and cursive, a postcard from Roe’s days in the Army, a picture of both of them, from when they were still young and inseparable, Roe’s ruddy cheeks and Snafu’s gap-toothed smile close enough to the camera that their faces are mostly a blur.

He sets them around Sledge’s room when he moves in and Sledge doesn’t say a word, doesn’t want to break the fragile peace that surrounds them.

Snafu wants to tell him that Roe will always be a part of his life, just like Sidney Phillips will always be a part of Sledge’s, but Sledge would tell him that that’s unfair, if only because he has never run off to Sid and slept with him behind Snafu’s back. If only because Sledge will never have with Sid what Snafu has with Roe, something dark and looming over them all, something that they will never understand.

Snafu wants to tell him that he will never be able to let go of Roe, no matter how many times Sledge wishes that he would.

 

**III**

Roe finds a new job at one of the clinics just outside of town, a place that needs a doctor badly enough that the advisory board glosses over his past indiscretions with little more than a one-line note in his HR file. Babe takes him out to dinner to celebrate, and they drink most of one bottle of wine before walking to the nearest bar, where Babe pours a few ill-advised shots into Roe’s mouth, kissing him after each one, the bitter taste of alcohol on his lips. They call a taxi and almost don’t make it to the bedroom, Babe’s mouth climbing the long column of Roe’s throat, his teeth catching on soft, warm skin.

Roe kisses him harder than he means to and Babe’s fingers rake across Roe’s back, his short nails scratching sharper than they should, and it’s sort of violent for a moment, rough, with Babe asking for more, more, more, and Roe giving it to him.

When they wake up the next morning, Roe rolls over to kiss Babe on the shoulder and finds a perfect set of teeth marks, red and angry on Babe’s freckled skin.

***

He moves through his shifts diligently, with less sleep than he’s had in months, and he smiles warmly, sweetly, at the pretty young nurses who bring him coffee and ask him about his service and swoon over Babe when he swings by to drop off a homemade dinner one night, steaming food in pale blue Tupperware containers that Babe grips like a peace offering.

Roe doesn’t kiss him right there, right then, but he places one hand on Babe’s shoulder affectionately, right where the teeth marks have already faded to a small set of indistinguishable bruises, green and yellow mottled skin. Babe quirks his mouth and Roe can tell that he so badly wants to lean in, but then there’s the loud beeping of heart monitors racing down the hallway and the page of Roe’s name over the intercom, and for one short moment Roe’s reminded of the desert, the screaming cries for a doctor and Babe’s hand almost touching his, his mouth close enough to kiss, and Babe gives him a familiar look like he always used to when they were in the midst of mortar fire, the explosions of IEDs, a look that says, “Go.”

And Roe does.

***

It is the war and it isn’t the war.

***

Babe doesn’t ask about the dreams, the ones Roe’s been having for weeks about his father dying in the candy aisle of a dime store while Roe sits with the ghostly imitation of the body and watches him reach out blindly, watches the blood curl around and around the floor, watches him draw his last breath. There are no cries for his son at home, his dead wife, but Roe sits on the linoleum with his knees drawn up to his chest and cries over his father like he used to cry when he was young, great, heaving sobs that start in the pit of his stomach and travel up through his chest, tumbling out of his mouth and shaking his whole body.

He waits until after Babe has gone to work one morning, kissing both of Roe’s bloodshot, tired eyes before walking out the door, and then he drives to his grandmother’s house. She makes him some grits on the stove and asks him how he’s sleeping and he lies first, says he’s fine, Edward’s fine, but she gives him a look that withers him where he sits at her kitchen table.

She says, in French, “You been having those dreams again, Gene?” and he looks down at the chipped wood underneath his hands.

“Yes,” he says, in English. “They’re worse this time, though. More graphic.”

“Have you told your boy?” she asks, but there’s no malice in it, no disapproval, and Roe knows that this is because she has lived longer than most, lived through too many wars, and has seen firsthand that the world could do with a little more love.

“No,” Roe says, fingering the scratches on the table, the imperfections. “Edward doesn’t know yet. I’m not sure how to tell him.”

She turns off the flame on the ancient stove and leaves the pot cooling, walking over to Roe and placing one soft, wrinkled hand under his chin, pushing up until he looks her in the eye. “You tell him the truth, darling,” she says.

***

He meets Renée at the clinic.

She reminds him of his grandmother, but more than that, she reminds him of Babe. She wears her blond hair up when she works, her strong hands fishing IV lines and bandaging children and spreading ointment over burns. She is stoic and strong, but smiles freely, her gloved hands covered in blood, her mouth red and wet and inviting.

It’s easy with her, familiar, and if he was someone else, if he was somewhere else, he thinks he could love her as much as he loves Babe.

Roe tells her the story of the traiteurs, the way his grandmother healed sickness with her hands, the way he does now. She laughs and calls it a fairy story, her French accent bright in the space between them, and Roe smiles, but doesn’t contradict her. “You were born to be a doctor then, no?” she asks.

“I guess,” he says, but inside, his heart stills.

 

**IV**

They go apartment hunting in Chickasaw, Sledge wrinkling his nose at most of the places they find. He’s used to the big plantation houses, he’s used to the land that swallows them up with its tall weeds, and he says so to Snafu, his voice clipped and arrogant.

Snafu doesn’t once tell him about his father’s house, the small, cramped quarters and threat of alligator bites, the two bedrooms and shared bath, the kitchen that hadn’t been touched since his mother left.

Sledge had finally given in and started work at his father’s practice, shelving medical files and answering the phones with forced cheerfulness, his father pushing him into applying for a couple of pre-med courses, and then Sledge had grown tired of listening to his father preach the advantages of an education in both facets of his life, so he had decided to move out with the humble amount of money he had saved up during his tour. Snafu hadn’t said anything about the decision, but was willing to go anywhere with Sledge, especially if that meant getting out from under the looks Sledge’s mother and father give him sometimes, like they can’t quite figure him out, like they aren’t sure what exactly he plans to do with their son.

They find one place just off the highway and it’s small, but charming, Sledge walking from room to room and testing windows, opening and closing doors, stepping over creaks and then back again. It’s well within their price range, and Sledge asks him about it that night long after his parents had gone to sleep, his mouth wet on Snafu’s neck.

“Whatever you want, boo,” Snafu says, and lets Sledge kiss him on the mouth, Sledge’s fingers fitting themselves into Snafu’s hair, drawing him closer.

***

They move in on a Sunday just after church, Sledge’s mother going home first to change out of her blue dress and to pack up a box full of cookies, pies, and powdered lemonade. Sledge’s father wears his suit pants and an open dress shirt, coating them with plaster and dust as he picks up one end of a sofa, as he moves boxes from Sledge’s car up the stairs, setting them down haphazardly in the living room.

The apartment is a one-bedroom but no one mentions it, instead pointing out the close proximity to the park, the half-hour ride from Sledge’s family church, how easy it would be to swing by his parent’s house after work for dinner before making the way back up here. It takes six trips to pick up everything Sledge and Snafu own from the car and bring it up to the apartment, and Sledge’s mother starts unpacking the dishes first, so she can wash them and position them in the cabinets by size and by need.

Snafu lights up a cigarette and Sledge takes him by the hand and leads him to the bedroom, where he pushes him against the closed door for one brief moment to kiss him, his smile wide and burning, Snafu’s tongue tasting like smoke.

***

It only takes them three days to christen every room.

 

**V**

Roe says, “I have these dreams sometimes,” and Babe looks up from where he sits on the couch flicking through channels, the television stopping at some old cowboy movie, John Wayne’s stilting drawl floating over both of them.

“What?” Babe says, frowning, confused.

“I get these dreams,” Roe says again, and he stands still in the doorway to the living room, his shoulder slumped against the frame. He’s tired, has been tired for so long that he can’t remember a time before restless, three hour fever dreams and staring up at the ceiling with his heart pounding wildly in his chest, feeling the ache of unshed tears in his throat. “They’re real dreams. I mean, things that have happened in real life.”

“You mean memories?” Babe says, and hits a button on the remote. The TV goes blank.

“Yes,” Roe says. “But not my memories.”

“Is this a traiteur thing?” Babe asks, one eyebrow raised. He knows little of Roe’s healing hands, only what he’s been told from Roe’s grandmother or Roe himself, the bits and pieces of a Louisiana tradition, the history of Roe’s family.

“Not really,” Roe says, and finally moves from the doorway to sit beside Babe on the couch. Babe lays a hand on Roe’s knuckles, and Roe flips his own hand around so that their palms are touching, warm. “It’s a me thing, I guess. My grandmother told me I’ve had them ever since I was little.”

Babe breathes in and out, tilting his head, considering. “Is that why you haven’t been sleeping lately?”

“Yeah,” Roe says, and Babe’s mouth is a straight line, a pink smear across his face.

“What are you dreaming about?”

Roe looks away, pulling his hand from Babe’s and taking the pack of cigarettes out of Babe’s jacket pocket, pulling one white stick from the package and tapping it twice, putting it in his mouth, unlit, before taking it out again. It’s a nervous habit, he knows, and he hasn’t smoked in a while, but he’s tired and he hurts and the cigarette is calling to him. Babe fishes out his lighter and cups his fingers around Roe’s mouth, the fire bright and hot between them.

Roe pulls one long breath and lets the smoke out in a perfect ring. “My father,” he says, in answer to Babe’s question, his voice hoarse. “The night he,” and here he pauses, draws on the cigarette again. “The night he died.”

Babe doesn’t say anything, but his hand finds Roe’s again, taking the cigarette from him, stubbing it out in the ashtray on the coffee table. That’s also a nervous habit: Babe finishing things that Roe has barely started.

“It’s like I’m there, in the dime store,” Roe says. “And I can see – and feel – everything. My father gets shot twice – I remember that from the news report, but I never knew where,” he looks down. “It’s once in the cheek, another in the forehead. And he doesn’t die, not at first, not right away, like you see in the movies.” He can feel the swell of tears in his eyes, but he can’t stop, not now. “And he moves his hand once, stretches it out to reach for something, I’m not sure what, and then he stops breathing, his body goes still, and I know that’s it. I know he’s dead.”

“Oh, Eugene,” Babe says, his voice a whisper. “Oh, baby.”

“It’s so vivid, Edward,” Roe says. “His blood is bright red against the floor and he smells like old soda and vomit and I can’t do anything. I can’t stop the robber, I can’t call out for my father, I can’t stop watching it.” He’s crying now, can feel the tears that fall fat down his cheeks. “And it happens every night. Every fucking night.”

Babe draws him to his chest, his arms holding tight, and Roe cries and can’t stop crying and he’s a mess of snot and tears, ruining Babe’s shirt underneath him. Babe kisses his forehead and his cheeks and then finally his lips, saying, “I’ll help you, Gene. I’ll do whatever you want,” his mouth covering Roe’s mouth, his tongue on Roe’s tongue, his words more for him than for Roe, soothing. “Whatever you want me to do, Eugene, I’m here for you.”

Babe says, “Tell me.”

And Roe doesn’t even know how.

***

(They eventually caught the guy, but only after he had hit three more convenience stores and then, just for fun, a liquor store, shooting the wide-eyed clerk before stacking bottles in a bag and carrying it out to his car, gunmetal gray and baking in the hot sun.

He was barely twenty-four years old and already addicted to methamphetamines, raised on stories of bank robberies and falling for the promise of a get-rich-quick scheme that didn’t seem like it could ever go wrong.

The police shot him three times in the chest, overkill, before cuffing his lifeless wrist to the handle of his car, his dead body slumped over and dripping blood as the officers waited for the ambulance.

Roe’s grandmother had told him in a letter while he was stationed in Afghanistan. She had written, “Bad things also happen to bad people,” her cursive script flawless and elegant, and Roe had bent over the letter and vomited in the sand, his mouth dry, his cheeks wet.)

***

He haunts the clinic like a ghost, going through the motions during every shift, smiling to patients kindly, but not with warmth.

Renée asks him if he’s alright three times before she finally corners him in the back office where the unused computers sit, blank screens, dusty keyboards. “You need to go home,” she says, and then again in French, holding the back of her hand to his forehead as if he were a child. “You’re running a low-grade fever and you haven’t eaten anything all day.”

“I’m fine,” he says, more than once, but she levels a raised eyebrow in his direction and he sighs. “I just haven’t been sleeping, is all. I’ll be right as rain tomorrow, promise.”

“You’re nothing to us like this,” she says, and he tries not to let it get to him, but he feels that cold stab inside of him, the faint echo of disappointment in her tone. He would say the same thing to any one of his nurses, to the other doctors, but it hurts coming from her. “You want to kill yourself, do it on your own time, cher.”

Roe makes a disgusted sound and she gives him a look, her mouth unwavering.

“You’re working too much,” she says, and he lets her because he doesn’t even know how to start talking about his dreams, how to make it sound as if he isn’t crazy, how to make it sound as if they aren’t only dreams. “And you’ll run yourself into the ground. We need you to be stable here, Eugene.”

“Okay,” he breathes, and slips his white coat from his shoulders. “Alright, I’ll go home.”

“I’ll take your patients,” she says, plucking his coat from him. “You get some rest. And kiss your boy for me.”

Roe smiles briefly, tightly, and lets her lead him to the door.

***

He has the dream again that night.

And the night after that.

 

**VI**

Snafu texts Roe, asking him to come down and see the new apartment, see Snafu’s first real home (because if he was honest, the only home he ever thought of as real was Roe’s grandmother’s house in St. Martin Parish, but he only ever spent weekends there and, sometimes, if he was lucky, nights of aborted kisses and Roe’s soothing fingers tracing patterns in his hair), but Roe doesn’t answer. He waits it out, lets a couple of days go by before he texts again.

Then he calls.

Then he leaves a voicemail.

Then he leaves six voicemails, each one a little more worried, a little more angry, at first not knowing if anything’s wrong, and then second guessing their supposed peace, second guessing Babe’s influence, Babe’s indignation. He asks where Roe is, and then he asks if Roe is screening his calls, and then he asks if Roe’s in some sort of trouble, if he’s done something horrible, and then he asks if something terrible has been done to him, if he’s dead and nobody has thought to call Merriell Shelton because how could Merriell fucking Shelton deserve to know that his best friend has died when he so clearly fucked up Roe’s life to begin with, when Snafu is so reckless and so callous and so cruel.

Snafu calls in sick to work and spends the day by the phone, waiting, worrying, before he finally works up the nerve to call Babe, ready to speak a piece of his mind, ready to give both of them hell.

“Hello?” Babe says at the other end of the line, and there’s white noise in the background, hushed, except for Babe’s slow breathing.

“Babe?” Snafu says, and his tone is somewhere in between angry and uneasy, wavering slightly. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of Eugene. Is he there?”

“Oh, Merriell,” Babe breathes, and it’s not with the fury that he usually holds tight in his lungs when Snafu calls, when Snafu is in the same room and Roe looks between them and doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know who to comfort first.

Snafu flinches at his name first, and then feels something cold inside of his chest, something inside of him that stills the beating of his heart, that stills the rattle of his lungs. “Is he okay?”

Because he knows, he fucking knows, that there’s something going on now, that something has happened and that Roe is not awake (or alive) to know it because Snafu used to be on the shortlist of people to call, used to be one of the most important people in Roe’s life, and if he wasn’t called, if he doesn’t know –

“There was an accident,” Babe says, and Snafu can’t move, can’t breathe, panic thrumming through his entire body. “He collapsed at work. The doctors think that it was just exhaustion, he hasn’t been sleeping well these past couple of months, you know, but he’s in the hospital now, they’re taking good care of him.”

Snafu can hear the muted sounds of a machine through the phone, the beep beep beep of somebody’s heart still working. “Will he be okay?” he whispers, and he thinks that he hears Babe swallow over the line, breathe in a shaky, scared breath.

“I think so,” Babe says. And then again, maybe to reassure himself, “I think so.”

Snafu sits at the kitchen table for a long while after he hangs up, his hand on his face, silent, unmoving, and it’s only when he hears Sledge’s key in the front door that he begins to cry.

***

(By Snafu’s count, Roe had only been to the hospital twice in his entire lifetime.

Once when he contracted a bad case of the flu as a teenager, Snafu falling victim early on because he had been stupid enough to kiss Claudine Darois behind the elementary school swing set after lunch before passing it on to Roe when Snafu had hitchhiked his way to St. Martin Parish, his fingers walking across Roe’s bare chest, stealing kisses late in the night. It was for dehydration then, and Snafu had asked him how the IV felt in his arm and Roe had laughed, sorely, and said that it was just like drinking water without ever putting anything in your mouth.

Roe had been glued to the doctor’s every word, though, interested in more than just his diagnosis, interested in the tools and the procedures and the way the doctor had spoke to him, clinical but friendly, compassionate. And he had let his father palm his forehead, sweeping his hair from his eyes and laying one dry kiss just above Roe’s eyebrow, even though he would usually just shake him off, even though he would usually feign annoyance, caught in that space between trying to be a good son and trying to be cool for his friends.

The second time was in the war, just after Afghanistan, before Snafu had enlisted. Snafu had bought a bus ticket and begged admittance to the veteran’s hospital, ready to pitch a fit if they wouldn’t let him in to see Roe, even though he had been Roe’s emergency contact since the day that he had told Snafu he joined the Army.

Roe had looked pale on the bed, tired, and Snafu had caught him when he was sleeping, the wounded shoulder open and angry under the bright phosphorescents. Snafu had placed a hand on Roe’s arm and Roe had opened his eyes and Snafu’s heart had leapt to his throat.

“Hi,” Roe had said, and Snafu had said hi back, his ears pounding with the roar of blood through his veins.

Roe had told him then that he was sorry, but Snafu had been confused, didn’t know how anyone could think a sniper shot through the shoulder, just millimeters from the heart, would be their fault, until he realized that Roe was actually saying sorry for making you worry, sorry for making you think that I was dead, and that’s when Snafu had curled his hand into a fist, angry, and said, “Don’t you ever fucking do that to me again.”

And Roe had promised him that he wouldn’t.

Snafu guesses that Roe doesn’t always keep his promises.)

***

The drive to Louisiana is quiet, serene.

Snafu doesn’t say a word, which is unnerving for Sledge, he knows, because Sledge keeps bouncing his left knee, keeps moving his hand from the wheel to Snafu’s thigh and then back to the wheel again, stopping and starting sentences that Snafu never acknowledges. They only stop for food and even then Snafu barely touches it, fiddling with the plastic straw in his soda just to keep his hands busy.

When they finally see the hospital through the windshield, Snafu becomes a ball of energy, restless, hungry for the sight of Roe, hungry for some answers. They meet Babe in the parking lot, and Babe moves forward like he wants to give Snafu a hug or something, but he stops short, ultimately thinking better of it and just smiles politely instead.

“He’s on the fourth floor,” he says, and Snafu wants to know if that’s code for something meaningful, something that could tell him what’s going on, but Babe starts making his way to the front doors without another word and Snafu and Sledge follow obediently.

They take the elevators and Babe crosses his arms over his chest as they watch the floors pass and it looks like he’s guarding himself, protecting himself from what’s about to happen, and Snafu feels the tension in the pit of his stomach grow tighter.

Roe looks gaunt on the bed, barely alive, and Snafu almost breaks down by the door, his knees locking and unable to move him any further, the noisy machines looming over all of them. “Eugene,” Snafu breathes, and his voice is hoarse and unrecognizable. Sledge slips a hand through his, briefly, squeezing his palm for reassurance or courage or something else.

Roe opens his eyes and blinks, his pale face absent just for a moment, before he smiles wearily at all of them.

He says, “Hi.”

 

**VII**

Roe is utterly unapologetic.

Babe sits in the chair beside his hospital bed with his hand on Roe’s hand, tight enough that Babe’s knuckles are bright white against his tanned skin, and Roe keeps saying things like, “It’s nothing, really,” and “You should go back to work, Babe,” and “I just haven’t been sleeping,” and Babe’s face keeps turning more and more brilliant shades of red, the anger and frustration and worry creasing his forehead, working their way across his mouth.

Snafu had long taken over the hospital room, propping his feet on Roe’s bed, his sneakers fucking up the blankets with traces of dirt, spreading himself across the other chair, his fingers tucked into Sledge’s clothes. “You keep having these dreams, boo, and we’re going to get tired of meeting you at the hospital,” he says, taking out a cigarette and placing it on his bottom lip before Sledge snatches it from him and gives him a stern look.

“I’m fine, Merriell,” Roe says for what must be the thousandth time, because honestly he’s lost count and the exhaustion that is licking its way up his body is too much, too heavy, for him to keep arguing the point. “You can go on back to that new place of yours,” he says, and smiles halfheartedly.

“Or they can stay at the house and come back in the morning,” Babe says, and he’s no less angry, no less volatile. “Because you’re not checking yourself out.”

“I’m a doctor,” Roe says, bluntly. “I should be able to release myself.”

Snafu makes a face, but doesn’t say anything, watching Babe’s mouth tighten, watching him lay his other hand flat on Roe’s blanketed thigh.

“Eugene,” Babe says calmly. “You need to sleep. If they have to give you drugs to do that, then so be it, but you’re staying here where they will notify us if anything is wrong.” And then, quieter, “Please.”

Babe’s wet eyes and troubled mouth and shaky, exhausted hands, and he’s whispering, “For me.”

Roe looks at him for a moment, the quiet hush of the room overwhelming all of them, before nodding his head. “Okay,” he says, and watches as Babe breathes an audible sigh of relief. “I’ll stay.”

***

Just before they all leave – Babe walking slowly down the hall to talk to Roe’s doctor, his uneven, worried face, Sledge standing awkwardly outside the door, crossing and uncrossing his arms, unsure of himself – just before the walk back to the parking lot, the quiet, uneventful drive to Babe and Roe’s house, Snafu climbs into bed with Roe, just like old times, his warm hands and his warm mouth pressing a kiss to the side of Roe’s face. They know nothing will happen, they know that this isn’t about sex, they know that both Sledge and Babe will allow them this small moment, so Roe lets Snafu take his palm against his and lay there for a little bit, close enough to feel every movement the other one makes, close enough to feel both of their heartbeats.

Snafu says, “I’m glad you’re okay, Eugene,” his breath tickling Roe’s cheek.

And Roe feels the rush of blood through his veins, feels the throb of his own pulse, wild, with the sudden realization that he could have lost this, that he could have lost all of them. He thinks of Babe and he knows that if something were to happen, to him or to Babe, he knows that neither one of them would be able to escape unscarred, and he pulls Snafu closer, his nose bumping Snafu’s chin, and breathes, “Me too.”

***

With the drugs that thrum throughout his entire body, he doesn’t dream that night.

 

**VIII**

Snafu calls Roe’s grandmother at dawn, warning her of his impending visit.

He’s sitting quietly in bed beside Sledge, who snores like the devil is inside of him, and grips the phone tight to his ear. She’s up already, like she always is, old bones and hot coffee from the stove, and Snafu imagines her sitting on the porch on her favorite rocking chair, watching the sun climb over the trees.

She says, “I knew you’d come,” and he laughs at her tone, the wizened old woman he’s always remembered so fondly.

“Did you now?” He drawls, and she turns serious for a moment, asks about Roe, and Snafu doesn’t lie, tells her that he’s worse than he’s seen him in a long time, pale and tired and fucking old.

She says, “You bring him to me, Merriell.”

And he does.

 

**IX**

Roe checks himself out of the hospital against Babe’s wishes, against the wishes of the doctors who look at him reproachfully, warning him of the dangers of exhaustion, warning him that he shouldn’t get behind a vehicle, that he shouldn’t be administering medicine or advice to patients without the trusty eye of a nurse, and he nods quietly, tiredly, and tells them that he’s fine now, that’s he’s alright, but he will let them know if he gets this bad again. The doctors give him that knowing, astute gaze that all doctors carry inside of them and wish him well.

Snafu picks him up, the truck Sledge had driven to Louisiana rumbling under his touch. Snafu opens the door for him and says, “We’re going to take a quick detour,” and Roe looks at him for a moment before shaking his head and sliding into the seat, leaning back and closing his eyes for just a moment.

He wakes up when Snafu touches his arm lightly, reflexes from the war, and he feels stilted for a moment, out of place, until Snafu says, “C’mon,” and leans across him to open Roe’s door. It’s something Roe used to do for him in the old days, reach across him to take a hold of the handle, Snafu’s lips brushing across Roe’s temple, something Roe used to do after he had just gotten his license and invited Snafu to sneak out with him at night, speeding down the highway until they were clear out of Louisiana.

He stumbles out and sees his grandmother’s house and knows, just knows, what he’s here for, and turns to glare at Snafu, but Snafu has already started for the door. “This isn’t fair, Merriell,” he says, and Snafu turns and raises his middle finger.

“Fuck your fair,” Snafu says. “You need this, Eugene.”

He disappears inside the house and Roe follows.

***

(It had always been his grandmother, even before his father had been killed, it had always been her that he clung to when he was sick or tired or upset.

She was like a mother to him, had filled a hole inside of himself that he never knew was missing, and Roe knows that he needs this now more than anything, but he’s afraid of what this means, he’s afraid that something will take away his only link to his father, the only lasting connection he has now, the ghost of his father’s body dying and dying and dying inside the recycled air of a dime store, the blood and vomit and shit, the explosion of red in the air, the small pieces of skull and brain matter that coat the plastic candy wrappers.

He’s afraid that if he closes his eyes and lets this happen, that the memories of his father – the good memories, the sweet memories of birthdays and Little League tryouts and fishing trips – will be pulled out of him like smoke through a chimney, disappearing into the sky. He’s afraid that if he lets her do this, that she will make him forget that his father existed, she will make him forget that he ever knew him.

And he’s afraid that if he lets her do this, that means that he wants to forget.

That means that he’s ready to let his father go.)

***

His grandmother asks him to lie still on her dining room table, folding a bed sheet over it first, just in case. She says, wryly, “I’m not as young as I used to be, you know.” Her voice is a whisper in the room, all around them. “I can’t bend my knees to the floor.”

Roe says, “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” but Snafu silences him with a look.

Snafu is standing still in the doorway to the room, fiddling with an unlit cigarette. He watches everything with a blank look, his lips a tight line on his face, and Roe thinks that this might actually be his first time.

“Don’t worry, child,” his grandmother says. “It’s just like I taught you.”

He had seen this a thousand times, his grandmother’s hands and women, children, men all lined up and ready for their communion with God. She had taught him to do this when he was only young and he hadn’t been afraid then, to place his small hands on chests and arms and stomachs and knees and to pray, pray, pray that the sickness travels through him like a conduit.

She says, “Now, Eugene,” and settles him on the table, lifting up his shirt so she can place her warm hands on his stomach.

He closes his eyes and lets himself drift, lets his mind go blank, and she hums lightly underneath her breath, a prayer, and suddenly he feels the warmth that opens him up, that strips him bare, the warmth that gravitates from her hands and moves up his chest, up the long column of his throat, up, up, up to his forehead, spreading out from the center there, dissolving.

His grandmother hums again and he feels the sickness inside himself coil tighter, the ache like a fist, holding on, unmoving. He makes a sound and there’s another hand on him now, Snafu’s, he knows, light on his wrist, reassuring. She pushes down harder and it’s there, the sickness, he can feel it just beneath the surface of his skin, and it’s hard and painful and he wants to cry out because it’s curling up even tighter now, it’s making it hard to breathe, this thing inside of him that won’t let go.

Snafu holds his wrist hard enough to bruise, and his grandmother hums louder, her voice strong between them, her words French, but unrecognizable, something she’s never taught him to say, something that remains a secret to her and to God.

Roe swallows uncomfortably, the ache in throat, and she pushes down once more, harder, and that’s when he feels it, the thing that breaks up, that disintegrates, the thing that lets go and explodes inside of him, gone forever. He starts to cry at the release and his grandmother leans down and kisses his face, once on his forehead and then again on both of his cheeks.

“There now, darling,” she says. “There now.”

Snafu curls his hand into his and Roe grips him tight and cries, cries as though he’s never felt this way before, as though he’s never had this much peace, and Snafu nudges his cheekbone with his nose, a quiet harmony, and Roe finally, finally falls asleep.

***

When he gets home, Babe is furious.

He bites his lip and takes his hand to lead him into the bedroom, closing the door on Sledge, who looks at Snafu like he feels confused and worried and entirely out of place. “I’m okay,” is the first thing out of Roe’s mouth and Babe smacks him on the chest, his palm flat and weak.

“I can see that,” Babe says, his voice harsh. “Didn’t think to fucking call me and tell me that, though?”

Roe sighs. “I had to do something first. Actually, Merriell had to make me do something first, but I’m alright now, I’m much better.” And he knows he looks it, after sleeping on his grandmother’s table for three hours before getting up and looking at himself in the bathroom mirror, the lines on his face erased, the relief seeping through his pores.

Babe crosses his arms over his chest. “I’m glad you feel better, Gene, but fuck you if you think that it was okay to leave me like that without knowing where you were. Who did you think was going to call and tell me, Snafu?”

“My grandmother, actually,” Roe says, sheepishly. “But she was probably tired, too, afterwards.”

“Did she…” and here Babe pauses, unsure of what to call it.

“Yeah,” Roe says. “Yeah, she’s done it to me before, but never this deep. It was…cleansing.” He shrugs and Babe sags against him, the anger dissipating, his mouth on Roe’s neck, his hands curling around Roe’s waist.

“Please don’t let it get this bad ever again,” Babe says, and he sounds tired, depleted. “Please, Eugene.”

“Never again,” Roe promises, capturing Babe’s mouth in a wet kiss.

 

**X**

They live.


End file.
